Earlier this week I had to go into the city, about an hour from home, for an early doctor’s appointment. The trip was a hassle, but fortunately I had a good motivator: a $100 poker tournament donkament at the nearby casino. Because what better way is there to spend a Monday morning?
Excited by the prospect of playing some live tournament poker, something I rarely get to do nowadays, I walked into the card room and took my seat with 65 other degenerates and retirees.
As the first few levels unfolded, you could tell it was the kind of field where you wish you were playing for thousands of dollars instead of hundreds. I’d guess there were maybe 10 to 15 competent players in the room, another 30 or so who played often enough (cash game regulars and low-stakes grinders) to have some idea what they were doing but still had massive leaks, and the rest were players you wouldn’t stake in a $1 sit-n-go with a million-dollar prize pool.
Marie was definitely in that last group. Maybe late 50s, the beauty of her youth still evident, and sweet as pie.
It didn’t take long to spot Marie’s leak: fear. I mean absolutely terrified. We’re talking folds you wouldn’t even see a corpse make. 44 in the big blind to a single raise. AJo blind vs. blind facing an 8 bb shove. And most egregiously, AQs on the stone bubble against the short stack’s all in—which she folded face up for the whole table to see.
The reaction was predictable. A couple guys scoffed. One turned to another “AQs,” he said, eyebrows raised, chin tilted toward her.
I watched Marie glance over at him and shrug her shoulders in defeat. A couple of the “nicer” players chimed in—the ones who like to think of themselves as ambassadors of the game. “You can’t fold there, that’s a mistake,” one said, as if she’d asked. Another tried explaining range equities to her, as if she was going to have an epiphany right there between hands.
And me? All I could think about was how stupid poker players can sometimes be. Not Marie mind you, she was just an amateur—that’s inexperience, not stupidity. I mean the rest of the table.
It reminded me once again that most poker players don’t actually know which version of themselves they want to be. Because the way I see it, there were really only two options in that scenario. Either you want to maximize your own long-term edge—which means you should shut the hell up and let the fish be fish—or you want to be a good, kind person—in which case, you should learn how to talk to humans in a productive way.
If your only goal is to win, you let her keep folding and move on with your day. You think Phil Ivey would lecture her on how to call the bubble correctly? Of course not. He’d thank the poker gods for having her at his table and start opening any two. And if you’re trying to build community, trying to grow the game, trying to be a generally good human, then you have to do it in a way that actually accomplishes that goal. Not by showing off your knowledge of the game and drowning her in solver-approved strategies, but by saying something like, “It can be scary calling big bets on the bubble—but as the saying goes, sometimes you have to be willing to die in order to live.”
That’s how thoughtful people talk. That’s how you actually help.
But most people are stuck in this weird middle ground—wanting fun, fishy games, but not acting like it.
Fortunately, the poker gods always have a sense of humor. Because as my tablemates busted one after the other, Marie sat there quietly collecting the chips they inexplicably blasted off into her obviously nutted hands.
By the time I made my unceremonious exit in 4th place (I’ll spare you the bad beat story), Marie had about 75% of the chips in play.
No, she didn’t get there by playing sound theoretical poker. No, she probably wouldn’t end up in the final 3 again if she got 100 more entries. But sometimes the universe has a funny way of teaching us lessons. And on this day, I was thrilled to see that it chose Marie as its vessel.
I hope she took it down.
